Iterations
by scribblemyname
Summary: Trust that can't be forced. Wants that can't be reached. Sets of five drabbles
1. Iterations of Trust

A/N: Prompts from LJ community **100wordstories**. wild, almost empty, surrender, irresponsible, organic

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><p><strong>Iterations of Trust<strong>

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><p>Ten-year-old Charles waited until his mother was in bed before he sneaked down to the mansion kitchen. He quietly opened the door of the pantry and removed the fresh-baked loaf of bread his mother had bought, then tiptoed to the back door.<p>

Outside, he knew he would find the girl.

She was a little, wild thing, dark blue with a splash of red when moonlight touched her. She had not let him near her yet, but he figured it was only a matter of time.

He left the food on the step and a thought in her mind. _Trust me._

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><p>Angel Salvadore had been running almost longer than she could remember.<p>

Men beat her down in ways she didn't share with Charles and Erik when they came to rescue her from a life they didn't realize was merely a means of survival. She accepted. They were decent men; she was almost empty.

The world was harsh and unfair in ways she didn't share with the starry-eyed idealists she had joined. She couldn't explain that she trusted Shaw because for the first time in her life she saw something to run _to_ instead of from.

"To the future," she promised herself.

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><p>Charles winced as how easy it was to read it off of the small, frightened child with the glowing white eyes and hair and dark skin in the middle of Cairo, Egypt of all places. It was raining and her wild thoughts told him it was <em>her<em> fault, and she didn't know how to stop it.

_I can help you. _He refrained from touching her mind more than possible, but truth be told, he didn't speak Egyptian.

White eyes flashed into a human blue. He caught his breath and reached out his hand.

She took it.

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><p>Charles was <em>good.<em> He was the moral compass that gave Erik something to push against, to fight for. Erik excelled at aiming toward a world that people like Charles could _belong_ in, whether or not those people realized he was doing it for them.

Erik stared down at the redheaded girl smiling up at him. Not three months ago, Jean was a surly child, unhappy and too powerful for her own good. Erik had trusted Charles to _help_ her.

"Do you remember who you are?" he asked, anger clenching his hands into fists. "Phoenix?"

Jean frowned. "My name is Jean."

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><p>"Trust must grow organically, Alex," Charles told him quietly. "You can't force it."<p>

Alex clenched his hands into loose fists and worked his jaw. "He's my _little_ brother."

"Yes," Charles agreed, then even more gently, "who does not remember you."

Scott tilted his head as if he could hear them, but he was outside on the lawn, and the two men were in the Professor's study. Alex couldn't stand the sight of the blindfold he wore. Brain damage. It should have been Alex that had been broken beyond repair.

"Give it time."

Alex shook his head and did not answer.


	2. Iterations of Want

A/N: Prompts from LJ community **100wordstories **and **electrumqueen** and **copperiisulfate**.

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><p><strong>Iterations of Want<strong>

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><p>"Tell me a story, Charles." Thirteen-year-old Raven snuggled in beside her brother on his chair. She did not wait for his permission.<p>

"I could read you my school report," Charles suggested, eyes twinkling. "It is scintillating material."

"No. I want to _live _it."

With a sigh, Charles set aside his books and pulled his little sister close.

"Alice and Wonderland," she demanded.

"You always want that one," he complained.

But she insisted. "It's my favorite."

So they met, mind to mind, and through his power, she _became_ a little blonde girl named Alice and walked the world of his creation.

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><p>A knock on her door, a surprise gift—what girl wouldn't want these things from her almost boyfriend? But the gift had been something she no longer wanted, a denial of who she really was. And the almost boyfriend became the face of everyone who had never wanted who she really was—<em>her mother, her father, even Charles...<em>

Raven stared at the serum. He was sweet and cute and as geek as Charles ever was. _She tried not to admit it, but she had a thing for geeks._ She wanted _him_, hairy feet and all. Why couldn't he want _her?_

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><p>Charles refused to believe the warnings, and Erik's frown only grew deeper every day. Jean would hear their minds' soft whispers in her head.<p>

_You cannot remake her in her image. She's_ gone,_ Charles. _

_I'm not remaking her into anyone._

Stubborn, stubborn men.

Jean loved them both. She did not understand their drawn battles over chess pieces and images of little girls, so many of them with a hundred faces, a hundred skins. She did not understand why Erik did not want Charles to love her. She did not understand why Charles loved the other girls—_faded memories, jaded love_—better than he loved her.

_I'll be good, _she would whisper to her room of nights, when their pawns would slip into her dreams. _I won't be Phoenix. I'll be Jean. I'll be good, as good as the other girls were. _

Erik wanted her to be Phoenix, but Erik did not love her.

_The best you ever had is just a memory. _

_Jean will be the best, Erik. She already is. _

Stubborn, stubborn men. Pawns that look like redheaded girls, with a thousand faces, with fire under skin.

Her dreams would fade to images, birds: a firebird and a raven.

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><p>They want to be the heavens, his student, his girls. Always struggling to measure up and always failing.<p>

"You're not alone, Professor. You still have me." Ororo would touch his shoulder, looked into his eyes were her deep concern.

But he would smile sadly and kindly pat her hand. "I know and I am grateful." But both of them knew he really wanted Jean.

Ororo wondered sometimes if _she_ had found some way to hold back that water, stop that dam from breaking and killing them all, if _she_ had been the one lost, then the Professor could be happy.


End file.
